Will this be avenged ?

Manmohan Singh promises to inflict ‘costs’ upon Pakistan. But diplomatic obfuscation, writes G Parthasarathy, has already let Islamabad off the hook. And politics has defanged India’s capacity to undertake covert, ‘seek and destroy’ ops across the border

(December 01, New Delhi, Sri Lanka Guardian) The carnage in Mumbai inevitably raises the query yet again about whether India is a “soft state”. Mumbai and its law and order machinery are not new to terrorist attacks, starting with the bombings of 1993 that were masterminded by Dawood Ibrahim and his Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) sponsors. Yet the trial process of those accused of that heinous crime still drags on, and the mastermind lives in comfort in a spacious villa in Karachi, travelling around the world on Pakistani passports.

With at least one of the Pakistani perpetrators of the past week’s terrorist attacks in custody, there is going to be no difficulty in establishing the involvement of the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba, now functioning under the name of the Jamat-ud-Dawa. Its leader, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, had openly boasted of how he had organised the attack on Delhi’s Red Fort in January 2001.

Yet, instead of taking note of his actions, the Indian Government chose to invite Pakistan’s then “Chief Executive” Pervez Musharraf for a summit meeting in Agra a few months later. This was a farcical event that preceded an attack on India’s Parliament by yet another Pakistani jihadi group, the Jaish-e-Mohammed.

The Mumbai attack has particular international significance because Pakistan-based terrorists have targeted not only Indians but also nationals of the United States, United Kingdom and Israel. Hafiz Saeed has often come out with proclamations that “Christians, Jews and Hindus are enemies of Islam”. After boasting that his followers had hoisted the flag of Islam at the Red Fort, Saeed proclaimed he would ensure that the green banner of Islam would fly over New Delhi, Washington and Jerusalem.

He has claimed Pakistani sovereignty over not only Kashmir but also “Hyderabad Deccan” and Junagadh in Gujarat, and vowed to “liberate” the Muslims of India. Hence, he has chosen to name the new front that claimed credit for the Mumbai outrage as the “Deccan Mujahideen”.

New Delhi has an opportunity to corner Pakistan. Media coverage across the world has focused attention on how foreign tourists have been systematically and meticulously targeted. The attack on the Jewish Centre in Mumbai is going to enrage public opinion in Israel, which has many supporters in the United States.

But this effort has necessarily to be tempered with realism, particularly in countries like the United Kingdom. They depend on the ISI for their presence in Afghanistan and to deal with terrorism perpetrated by Pakistani immigrants.

The United States was undoubtedly helpful in exposing the ISI role in the attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul. But one wonders if a Barack Obama Administration will extend the same measure of cooperation in addressing terrorism directed against India. After all, the Bill Clinton Administration did precious little despite substantial evidence of ISI involvement in the 1993 bomb blasts in Mumbai. It is important to move expeditiously on this issue while President George W Bush is still in office.

To a large extent, India will have to use its own resources to make it clear to Pakistan that supporting jihadi terrorist outfits on its soil will have its consequences. While Prime Minister Manmohan Singh spoke of “external linkages” and warned that neighbouring countries that perpetrated such acts would have to bear the “costs”, he has left himself with hardly any leverage to inflict “costs” on Pakistan.

He is after all on record as saying that the dialogue process with Pakistan was “irreversible” and even shed copious tears insisting that Pakistan, like India, was a “victim of terrorism”. During his entire tenure in office, the aggressive manner in which Pakistan’s links with terrorism directed against India used to be exposed was discarded.

Instead, senior Government officials spoke of groups like the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba being “freelance terrorists”. During the recent Home Secretaries’ dialogue, the Pakistani side refused to acknowledge Dawood Ibrahim lives in Pakistan. Do note that the role of the Mumbai don in the recent attacks cannot be precluded.

Saeed is well funded, runs Islamic educational institutions and has cadre in Arab Gulf countries. Politically he has been close to former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s family. Following American pressure, the Lashkar was declared an international terrorist organisation by the United Nations, requiring its assets to be seized and its cadre forbidden from foreign travel.

General Musharraf and the ISI responded by getting the Lashkar to function under the name of its parent organisation, the Jamat-ud-Dawa. Subsequent American efforts to get the Jamat too declared an international terrorist organisation failed in the face of Chinese and Pakistani opposition.

It would be naive to assume that Pakistan will accept any evidence India provides to act against the Lashkar. It, therefore, defies comprehension precisely what Manmohan Singh wishes to achieve by inviting the ISI chief to give him evidence of Lashkar involvement. The ISI chief (or his representative) will promise to look into the facts and then return to Pakistan and change the situation on the ground, enabling him to refute Indian evidence and stall progress.

The proper course would have been to publicise and make the evidence available to countries whose citizens have been targeted or killed in the Mumbai carnage. This would compel powerful countries like the United States, United Kingdom, Japan and Italy to demand action by Pakistan.

In these circumstances, the strategy adopted by Manmohan Singh will only result in the Mumbai outrage being forgotten, like past instances of terrorist violence perpetrated by the ISI. Those brave men who laid down their lives defending our country during the operations in Mumbai would have died in vain, because of the diplomatic ineptitude and naiveté of our rulers.

Sadly, the Prime Minister has shown a remarkable lack of realism. He has let Pakistan off the hook. By equating India and Pakistan, Manmohan Singh appeared to forget that terrorism in India was perpetrated by groups from Pakistan with ISI support, whereas terrorism in Pakistan was the product of differences between the ISI and the Government on the one hand and jihadi groups used by the ISI against India and Afghanistan in the past.

The strategy to raise “costs” for Pakistan can hardly be successful by mere diplomatic obfuscation. An iron will and measures other than diplomatic are also required, including targeted strikes at Lashkar centres and leadership if the Prime Minister’s stated objective is to be achieved and not frustrated by Pakistani stalling and doublespeak.

The terrorist carnage in Mumbai has exposed deficiencies in both the Coast Guard and Customs, whose officials need to be hauled up for inefficiency and worse. While it is all too easy to blame the intelligence agencies, the fact remains that their efficiency has been impaired by political interference or inaction.

It is no secret that the Intelligence Bureau (IB) spends a huge amount of resources collecting information on opposition parties and politicians to ingratiate its officers with the ruling dispensation. Every Government in India has misused the IB for internal political snooping.

The Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), responsible for external intelligence, has been effectively defanged by successive Prime Ministers having illusions that they will go down in history and get a Nobel Prize for making friends with Pakistan. The net result off such illusions and delusions is that New Delhi’s capabilities to inflict “costs” on errant neighbours, through covert action, are virtually non-existent.

Finally, our ill-paid and ill-equipped police forces have inevitably been affected by the corruption, criminalisation and communalisation that have afflicted our body politic. We can thwart terrorist plots only when these issues are addressed.

But when the Prime Minister fails to announce tough action against separatists and instead threatens and demoralises security forces with talk of “zero tolerance for human rights violations” during a visit to Jammu & Kashmir, his actions can hardly inspire confidence either with security forces or intelligence agencies. Even more than Mumbai, that is India’s tragedy.
- Sri Lanka Guardian